Features
Battery Powers On The Beach Brighton Concerts
Brighton’s On The Beach concert series, which featured Bicep, Underworld, The Kooks, Sub-Focus, Carl Cox, and The Libertines on England’s south coast, July 19-28, used an innovative power solution to supply the entire event site with energy.
Some 60,000 people attended the concerts over the six days, and a large 275kVA battery with 500 kWh of storage powered the entire site: bars, traders, merchandise, production and dressing rooms. During peak and show times, a total of three diesel fueled generators operated in addition.
The entire system was automated, so the generators would only activate during peak times, once the battery discharged below 40%.
Deploying a battery of this size is currently still very costly, which is why NW Live, the producers of On The Beach Brighton, probably wouldn’t have gone for this system this year.
But their energy supplier Energy Management Solutions had already invested in the system for a long-term install later this year.
Deploying it at On The Beach Brighton was the ideal opportunity to gather initial experience with the system, and “collect data,” as Energy MS director Gerhard Venter said, adding, “This allows us to understand how big-battery technology can reduce CO2 Emissions, coupled with the financial savings from the reduced fuel consumption.”
At last year’s On The Beach Brighton, Energy MS supplied three 300kVA generators for the stage, two 200kVA generators for bars and concessions, along with two 100kVA generators and one 60kVA generator for production and traders.
The battery reduced the number of generators needed from eight to three in 2024.
What is more, in between show weekends, and during production build, the new 500 kWh battery ran everything on the stage, as well, saving another six days of generator run time.
And, like last year, Energy MS once again powered the production cabins on the event grounds with a solar powered battery, charged form panels on site, covering event control/CCTV control, which, coupled with the larger battery, ran throughout the event. This saved another two weeks worth of generator run time, according to a press release.
Initial data from the first live weekend shows that generator run time was almost 50% lower than for last years’ initial weekend, equating to a diesel saving of around 5,000 liters, or over 13,000kg of CO2 emissions.